Broken Lullaby ▷ Tony Stark | ✓

30 - ALWAYS YOU

REMY WAS HAVING A CRISIS. He sat in his room, staring at the pink and red cardstock sitting around him, the flowers, paper cranes, and paper mâché basketballs strewn about haphazardly in a way that seemed to mimic how he was feeling: utterly disoriented.

"Remy, why are you so upset?" BUDDY asked from where he was blocking the sweater he made for Birdie, stretching it out along Remy's desk, seating it next to the wire necklace the boy had made for his mother in school.

Remy sighed long sufferingly as he watched his robot work, wishing he could be just as calm and monotonous as he was; though, to be fair, BUDDY was much more emotional than most robots, even going so far as to tell Remy that his words could hurt him when the boy made a particularly scathing remark during one of his bad days, something that left Remy feeling guilty for a full week.

During the upcoming weeks leading up to this day, Remy had been caught in a constant cycle of being severely overwhelmed by everyone around him.

His arms and legs were constantly throbbing and aching with a dull pain since he found himself wrangled into impromptu basketball lessons from Gage who, while loving Remy being their referee, really wanted the boy to join in and play with them, constantly afraid that he felt left out when he was the ref. Despite his attempts to explain that he didn't feel left out in the slightest, Remy, much too passive to say no, agreed to be taught how to play and, because of reasons he didn't want to get into, put in more than the required effort to do as best as he could.

His fingers had gotten much more coordinated, though there had been a period of time when they froze and ached, because he had gotten into the habit of making flower crowns with the girls whenever he could, though he never took any home anymore, but he tended to spend a good portion of his time with them, and he had to admit it was nice to be accepted by all of them, especially Stephanie, who he had seen turn away some other boys who tried to join in; granted, they were there to cause a ruckus, but the point still stood.

That had been his school life for quite some time now, and he could rarely be found anywhere near Ethan's class during lunch; of course, that had been seen for a while since he had been spending time with Marc, which was something that was also growing scarce; the two boys still spent nearly all their time together, but gone were the times when they hung down on the field by themselves.

Remy was glad to have more friends, and he finally felt like he was experiencing the average middle school experience, and he didn't have to lose any of his previous friends to do it. Yet, there he was, stressed out of his mind, and he had to wonder if it was worth it to care so much about people.

"Why don't you ask mom to help?" BUDDY asked, catching onto what Remy was so upset about, "She's already helped you with the candy cards for all of your classmates."

"Mom can't know," Remy said, and there was so much fear and desperation behind those three words that BUDDY immediately scanned through his database and searched for answers, understanding immediately.

"Mom isn't like that," he said, and he sounded like a real person then, like he tended to do more often than not, "And she won't get mad at you for telling her the truth."

Remy sighed, shaking his head. "You don't get it."

Unable to do anything else, BUDDY just watched as Remy continued to work, the boy barely paying any mind to the clock on his wall telling him that it was past midnight and he should probably go to sleep if he wants to wake up well enough to actually go to school and give his more personalized gifts.

The robot hadn't been told to go to sleep yet, so he just continued to work, watching and waiting until Remy laid down for just a brief moment, planning on just resting before getting back up to work again, only to fully fall asleep, unable to wake up.